[OOC][PLOT] Planning for Arc 2 - Crisis on Infinite Earths

[Black Aeronaut]

Ask her if she wants to go to Florida, we have a space ship crew that will take her up and teach her to EVA

I see what you did there...

Took me a moment to figure out what was going on there, and then I snorted. 

Changed the snippet slightly, after noticing on Memory Alpha that there's a canon Starfleet science ship that has a crew of 5 and can hold 80 people. So, yeah - fewer background characters and more room for spotlight characters whether they're Federation or not. (And does it still qualify as a snippet?)

Crew of five to reliably fly her. The other 75 people are scientists and maintenance techs.

I'm reminded of a comment SI Gryphon made about how Starfleet designed ugly ships.  I wonder why why starships even need that much staff, anyway?  I guess they need people to keep all the Jeffries tubes clean?

In regards to the Galaxy-class's bulbous looks, this had to do with the shape of the hull helping to more efficiently form the ship's warp field.  Ever noticed those displays that look like a magnetic field with the Enterprise in the middle?  That's a warp field diagram.  Notice how the saucer section fits so nicely into the forward half of the field?  Yep.  There you go.

As for the large crew... more than half the people in a Galaxy-class starship are science personel, with about another third of them being engineers and technicians to keep that big girl ship-shape.

Another thing to keep in mind is that the Galaxy-class is designed for five-year long cruises in completely uncharted territory.  What Voyager went through?  That was something more for what they had in mind with a Galaxy-class.  And for what they are?  Galaxy-class starships are a bit on the overpowered side.  In their heyday they were among the fastest ships in Starfleet.

Also note that during the Dominion War, most Galaxy-class starships you see are actually mostly empty hulls.  They were bumrushing them through production, and, in the process, cutting out a lot of the science labs and living accommodations normally found on their regular production sister-ships.  These were straight up warships they were churning out because the Galaxy-class, as I mentioned, was overpowered by regular Starfleet standards.  As a result, these warship-Galaxies had far fewer crew, as the massive living accomodations were mainly for the science personnel.  Engineering crew were also cut down to what was barely needed to get by, and a lot of them were barely more than just damage controlmen.

Alright, little reality kicked in here. Military ships are hideously overstaffed for a specific reason, they might end up in combat where the bodies are needed for damage control and to repel boarders. Remember that even the exploratory ships of the Star Trek universe are still in essence military ships and can expect to end up in combat at any given time, thus the same rules apply

Er, not really?  My experience in the Navy is that you have a man on board for every station that needs to be manned when the ship goes to General Quarters.  This includes the Repair Lockers (stations on the ship that act as hubs for damage control, with DC Central actually being what you may think of as 'Main Engineering' in Star Trek).

You have stations that are manned in the CIC (Combat Information Center, which is the analogue to Enterprise's Battle Bridge), Pilot House (Bridge), CIWS (Close In Weapon System - the 'goalie' if you will...), five inch gun (loader crew in the magazine, gun captain, gun operator, and at least two additional repair techs in case of a weapon system casualty), Harpoon Missile Control...  and so one and so forth.  Seriously, everyone's got a place when the ship goes to GQ.

In Star Trek this is a little different.  At least after Kirk's time, anyhow.

During Kirk's time they had recently concluded a war with the Klingons that climaxed at the battle of Axanar.  And the big game changer was the Constitution-class Heavy Cruisers.  Yes.  That's right.  The Connies are thoroughbred warships, and once they hit the scene just after the Battle of Axanar (which was where they were being developed and why the Klingons wanted to hit that system) the Klingon's knew they were beat.  The Connie and her sisters were there to kick ass and chew bubblegum, and the Federation was all out of bubblegum.  And all this before the Klingons could get their new Heavy Cruiser onto the field - the D7 - which would need another few weeks or so.  Which was time they no longer had - with the Connies out in the field, the Federation had the power to turn the tide of the war and were able to force the Klingons into negotiations.

Following that was a literally a Cold War with the Klingons, with both sides waiting for the other to twitch the wrong way.  The Klingons now had their D7's out in the field, so most Connie's maintained much of their firepower, with the science labs added in almost more as an afterthought.  There was space allocated for them, but as mentioned before, they're thoroughbred warships.  And the Federation made damn sure the Klingons knew where they stood by keeping regular patrols of the neutral zone going with the new Constitution-Class as the mainstay for those patrols.  Science and exploration may have been what the Federation was all about, but the wounds from the war were still very fresh.

Fast forward - post Battle of Khitomer era, where in a cowardly Romulan attack on the Klingons, Federation ships came to their aid and, in doing so, ushered in a new era of respect and mutual prosperity between the Federation and the Klingon Empire.  With the Klingons now staunch allies and the Romulan Star Empire having retreated behind their borders and putting up their own 'iron curtain', the Federation felt free to finally relax and turn their attention more towards exploration.

And thus began development of the Galaxy-class - a ship far bigger than anything they'd built yet - even bigger than the venerable workhorse that was the Excelsior-class (part of that is because the spaceframe is so sturdy - it was originally engineered to be the Federation's first Transwarp ship, but since that never worked out... at least they got a good ship class out of it).

The massive crew accommodations are largely due to the ship being able to house a massive number of scientists.  And not only them, but their families as well!  Because of the long-term missions for the Galaxy-class ships, they were among the first Federation vessels built to have families with children on board.  Which means they were also built with an eye towards their population growing a bit along the way.  (Not a whole lot, mind.  But with a crew of over 1,000 and maybe half of them being married and some possibly getting married along the way... yeah, you're gonna have some babies.)

What this means for the Galaxy-class is that when they go to Red Alert, the 'civilian' crew all evacuate to secure shelters - most of them in the saucer section since that's where most of the living quarters are.  This also makes civilian evacuation go a bit faster if they decide for a saucer separation if the risk factor is considered too great and they have the time to prepare.  Which is really a two-way migration.  Most of the command staff and non-science crew move to the stardrive section while the science personnel and civilians move to the saucer section.  Also note that saucer separation is a feature in all Starfleet ships built on the same platform as the Constitution-class, but this was a permanent evacuation and involved a series of exploding bolts to separate the two structures.  It was never an option to make the two sections dockable to each other until the Galaxy-Class.

And so that's why Federation starships carry far more people than they actually need for ship's crew.